In a partnership in this medium on March 16, 2018, when dealing with the importance of gesture, attribute and symbol in artistic representations, we recalled Valle Inclán, when he wrote about the importance of discovering "the arcane of things that seem vulgar and are marvelous", as well as A. Dumas' reflection that "he who reads learns a lot; but he who observes learns more". In the same way that listening is superior to hearing, something similar happens with seeing and looking. To look it is enough to fix the eyes, to see it is necessary to observe, examine and notice what appears before our eyes, without haste, which will lead us to understand its message. An old aphorism reminds us that "to see we must look and know". In this regard, Lope de Vega, when dealing with a biblical episode, affirmed: "In an image I read this story" and Father Sigüenza, when referring to a painting by Bosch, asserted: "I confess that I read more in this panel..., than in other books in many days". The challenge of many images consists of making plausible analyses and readings in the light of a context so different from the present and with codes so far removed from those of our time.

Everything related to the iconographic characterization of images, through collective or personal attributes, is of great interest. On this occasion and through the keys, present in different pieces of Navarre's cultural heritage, we will approach their meaning and reading.

With the allegories of authority and fidelity 

The representation of power or authority is presented, according to Cesare Ripa, humanist codifier of the allegories, as a matron of mature age (for possessing her own authority) seated on a noble seat (for being a position proper to magistrates and princes, showing tranquility of mind and calm) and richly dressed (as sample of majesty). As an attribute he carries the scepter (authority), numerous books, weapons (to assert the Ciceronian dictum: Cedant arma togae - Let the weapons give way to the toga-) and a pair of keys. The latter for their meaning of authority and power, in memory of those that Christ gave to St. Peter, recommending that these keys be raised upwards, "to show that all power comes from heaven", recalling the phrase of St. Paul: Omnis potestas a Deo est.

Another meaning of the key in allegorical language is fidelity and trust, meaning with this attribute an indication of the secrecy that should be kept about the things that concern loyalty.

Attribute of St. Peter and the papacy

The representations of St. Peter are accompanied by the keys as the most generalized attribute, due to the well-known gospel passage that will make him the claviger coeli. One of the oldest examples is a mosaic of the V century and since then it became the object of his identification, by antonomasia. Sometimes the key is one, although most often there are two, one of gold and the other of silver, keys of heaven and earth, symbolizing the power to bind and to unbind, to absolve and to excommunicate. Both appear together because the School of opening and closing is only one .

Generally, there are two and crossed. Countless paintings, reliefs and round sculptures show these keys, usually of large size so that they do not go unnoticed, from the leave Age average, some of them possessing very elegant designs, such as the Gothic ones in the cathedral of Pamplona, Cascante or Ichaso.

The Chair well visible would be incorporated to the figure of St. Peter and with greater force in times of the Counter-Reformation, when the saint appears seated in catedra, crowned by the triple crown and showing the keys with a gesture of authority. We can recall, in this respect, the Renaissance sculptures of Mutilva, Puente la Reina, Aibar, Gallipienzo, Igúzquiza and the Baroque ones of Viana, San Pedro de la Rúa de Estella or the cathedral of Pamplona.

In the scene of the submission of the keys, they take on real prominence both for their size (Aguinaga altarpiece by Ramón Oscáriz, a. 1575), and for their location in the scene, always in a highly visible place. The reliefs of the Romanesque altarpieces of Galdeano, Igúzquiza, Mendigorría and San Pedro de Lizarra de Estella stand out. In this last case (Juan Imberto II, 1581), the colors of both keys were very evident until an ill-advised intervention.

The keys to the cities 

The authority and power of the keys was widely visible in the abbatial takeovers in monasteries and other institutions, where the fact of the submission of the keys and opening and closing doors marked periods of government. In cloistered monasteries, the keys to the regular door, parlors and other rooms are still preserved strung on colorful chains.

As an element of protocol and ceremonial and a sign of reaffirmation of power, the keys of the city were given to the monarchs when they visited them, ordering copies to silversmiths or locksmiths and gilding them on many occasions. With medieval precedents, when the cities were walled and free access to them required the keys, during the Ancien Régime, their submission to the monarchs was the climax of their reception. Something similar was captured in famous paintings of the surrender of squares and cities such as that of Juliers (Jusepe Leonardo, 1634-1635) still with the medieval vision of the defeated kneeling and especially in the Surrender of Breda, known as the Spears of Velázquez, where the keys acquire the prominence of the place they occupy in the painting, where the victor does not let the vanquished prostrate, proclaiming clemency as the supreme military value.

The Navarre documentation is prodigal in news about the submission to the kings of the keys of the cities that they visited. As an example, we will recall some data in this respect. visit In 1592, on the occasion of the visit of Philip II to the Navarrese capital, the Abbot of Olloqui, in his report, affirms: "The mayor of the city, Don Antonio de Caparroso, in a very beautiful golden source carried and presented the keys of the city, which were gilded, kissing them out of courtesy and on his knees to His Majesty. The King received them and left them again".

In the entrance of Felipe IV in Tudela in 1646, it was the mayor of the city who approached the royal carriage and knelt down and offered him the keys of the city, which were brought to him by the treasurer on a golden silver tray. In Pamplona in the same year, it was the alderman corporal of San Cernin who gave the monarch the keys to the six portals. In 1719, for the visit that Felipe V made to Tudela, Juan Lucas Olleta gilded the keys of the city for his submission.

Chests of the three keys

Civil, ecclesiastical and guild institutions in Europe had this subject of coffers containing their archives and money. They needed the concurrence of three people to be able to open them. In Pamplona, the same Privilege of the Union (1423), gave the deadline of ten days so that the new city council ordered to make an oak chest with three locks and as many different keys that would be delivered to the captains of the three burghs annually. For the whole of Navarre, in 1547, the Cortes sanctioned the Ordinances for the government of the towns, which provided for the safekeeping of privileges and other documentation in the council's chest.

Many town halls preserve the aforementioned chest with its three keys, most of them from the XVII and XVIII centuries. Less fortunate have been the keys, the work of local locksmiths, and true works of craftsmanship such as those preserved in the file Municipal de Pamplona. Some have preserved other chests with several keys, such as the one in Tudela that keeps a chest with five keys destined to guard the teruelos of the insaculaciones for the elections of mayor and aldermen of the city. The guilds and brotherhoods, for the same reasons of security and discretion, had chests with three keys to keep their documentation, money, and even wax. 

The key to the Easter monument

Until the 19th century, the mayors used to keep and carry on their chest with a ribbon or chain the key of the Holy Thursday monument, despite the prohibition since the 17th century of several decrees of the Congregation of Rites, even if they were patrons or benefactors. In the protocol ordinance of Los Arcos, the following is stipulated for that day: "On this day the Mayor and Aldermen of the Noble state go to the parish to the mass and procession and, concluded, the said Mayor leaves the rapier and cane that the Warden will take being behind the seat of the said state, to take it to the house of the said Mayor, and he will kneel in front of the preste who will put the key of the Tabernacle on his neck, with a white ribbon that the said Mayor will buy in advance and will send it to the sacristan to put it on him and he will carry the said key all this day and night without a rapier or staff. The other nobles of the City Council can carry a rapier, since only the Mayor leaves it for the key that he carries".

During the 19th century, when the changes of the liberal society were imposed, some town councils protested because it was the parish priest or vicar who wore that emblem, from agreement with a decree of the Congregation of Rites of 1845, which reaffirmed what had been legislated so many times. An example of this is the communication made by the parish priest of Fitero to the town council in 1861 indicating that, from then on, he would be the one to hang the key. What until then had been consented to and allowed by custom, since then has been stopped with more or less urgency.

In Navarrese heraldry

The Armory Book of the Kingdom of Navarre incorporates the coat of arms of Enequo de Clavería, surname that comes from core topic or key and designates the place where they were kept. It is described as "of blue, a silver key in pal, silver wolf brochant". Among the members of the family, Simón de Clavería, the first mayor of Pamplona after the Privilege of the Union, stood out. Other lineages that incorporated the keys in their coat of arms were the Tabar family of the town of Lerín, with the two petrine keys in silver and gold with the pontifical tiara along with other elements. Don Carlos María de Tabar y García won his executorship in 1777 and placed the coat of arms of his house in Lerín in his house, in the street of San Antón. 

Also, the family of the González de San Pedro de Cabredo, to which the famous Romanist sculptor Pedro González de San Pedro belonged, used crossed keys as their heraldic emblem. This is shown in his nobility certificate, preserved in a private collection in the aforementioned town of Cabredo.

The heraldic emblems of the parishes dedicated to the prince of the apostles, as in Aibar, show the keys next to the papal tiara and are visible in stone and polychrome wood coats of arms, various seals and different pieces of gold and silver work.

Some singular examples: from a gothic core topic to an ex-voto

Among the keys with history, those of the castle of Santa Bárbara de Tudela, preserved in the Town Hall, stand out. That of the castle of Tudején, kept for centuries in the monastery of Fitero, did not have the same fate.

The one of the fortress of Pomblin in Milan that hangs, as an ex-voto, in the cathedral of the capital of the Ribera. The governor of that castle, Carlos de Eza, brought it in 1545 as a souvenir of the defense of that place and had it hung in the arch of his chapel of San Juan in the then collegiate church of his native Tudela.

In one of the keystones of the Gothic cloister of the cathedral of Pamplona, corresponding to the mensario, we find the month of January represented as a two-faced Janus with the keys of the claviger, typical of that god protector of the gates of the cities. The same iconography is repeated in the calendar of Ardanaz de Izagaondoa and in that of the frontal of Arteta, kept in the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, although the interest of the same is increased by presenting Janus triphonte and on the walls of a city.

In some female cloistered convents we usually find the so-called Child Jesus doorman, because of the dependency in which he is located. In order to guard the house, a key or a bunch of keys is usually hung on his arm or one of his hands. 

The Immaculate Conception that presides over the prioress chair of the choir of the Recoletas of Pamplona also holds the key as a symbol of the board of trustees that, from the XVII century and following a custom established by Mother Agreda, spread in Spain and Latin America. On the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, its text was recited with the express Withdrawal of the superior in the hands of the Virgin.

In the portraits of some religious superiors we also find the keys, usually hanging from a chain around their waist, as in the collective portrait of the Carmelite nuns of San José de Pamplona with their prioress Fausta Gregoria del Santísimo Sacramento (Garro y Xavier), made around 1670. More exceptional is that she holds the keys in her hand, as in the portrait of Petronila de Aperregui (1710-1790), nun of the Compañía de María de Tudela and founder of the high school de la Isla de San Fernando, where in addition to appearing with her eyes leave, she holds a key ring with her index finger from which hangs a key, which the nuns always read in core topic of humility and detachment of that nun who since she was a child had to do position of the government of her house with her nineteen brothers.

Some photographs of professions that implicitly involved the keeping of keys, are preserved in the file Municipal de Pamplona, highlighting the sereno and a brand new housekeeper with his wife. In both cases they are snapshots by Julio Altadill.